Schizophrenia is a serious disabling mental disorder. With the development of intense social competition, quick pace of life and changes in family structure, people face greater pressure than before, and consequently mental health problems become more and more prevalent. Schizophrenia is the most common disease in mental disorder. According to statistics, the prevalence of schizophrenia in China is 6.55%, there are more than 7.8 million schizophrenes, and the global disease rate is as high as 1.5%.
Antipsychotic drugs, also referred to as neuroleptic, may control mental symptoms of schizophrenia effectively. The commonly used antipsychotic drugs first appeared in 1950s, such as chlorpromazine or haloperidol, have a main pharmacological effect of blocking central dopamine D2 receptor and are effective in the treatment of positive psychosis symptoms, but may cause extrapyramidal movement disorders, and are invalid for negative symptoms and cognitive function damage, accompanying with many adverse reactions, also have greater toxicity on cardiovascular and liver with larger administration dose, and significant side effects. In order to overcome these shortcomings, since 1980s, new antipsychotic drugs appeared, main pharmacological effect of which is to block 5-HT2A and D2 receptors. The advantages of new antipsychotic drugs are that not only in the treatment of acute exacerbation of psychiatric patients, but also in the treatment of extrapyramidal symptoms and tardive dyskinesia, which have little side effects without the use of anticholinergic agents; tolerance and compliance of the treatment are good; therapeutic effects in improving positive and negative symptoms and cognitive function are strong, adverse reactions of extrapyramidal system (EPS) may be less or may not be caused, and endocrine adverse reactions may not be caused by the increase of prolactin levels.
Risperidone as a representative of new antipsychotic drugs was developed by Janssen Pharmaceutica in Belgium in 1984, with the chemical name of 3-[2-[4-(6-fluoro-1,2-benzisoxazole-3-yl)-1-piperidyl]ethyl]-6,7,8,9-tetrahydro-2-methyl-4H-pyrido[1,2-α]pyrimidine-4-one, has a good therapeutic effect on positive symptoms and negative symptoms of schizophrenia, and the incidence rate of extrapyramidal adverse reactions is low. A metabolite of risperidone, i.e., 9-hydroxy risperidone (paliperidone) has pharmacological effects similar to those of risperidone. Risperidone and 9-hydroxy risperidone together constitute the active ingredients of antipsychotic drugs.
Commonly used clinical dosage forms of risperidone comprise tablets, oral solutions, capsules, and orally disintegrating tablets, etc. For common dosage forms of risperidone, drugs usually have to be taken every day, which is difficult for about 75% of psychiatric patients. This is also a very important factor contributing to deterioration during the treatment.
In order to solve such problems, researchers have actively developed risperidone long-acting sustained release preparations. For example, CN1137756, the entire content of which is incorporated herein by reference, disclosed a risperidone sustained release microsphere composition prepared by using a polymer matrix material with a molecular weight of 100,000 to 300,000. Long-acting antipsychotic drug Risperidal Consta (Chinese name: HENGDE), which developed based on the technology in CN1137756, came into market in August 2002. The product is prepared by encapsulating risperidone in a lactide-glycolide copolymer (PLGA) with a molecular weight of 150,000, suspended in a solution, and administrated by intramuscular injection once every 2 weeks, thus avoiding the peak-valley concentration of daily administration effectively. However, only a small amount of drug in the preparation is released on the first day, followed by a drug release lag phase after 3 weeks, and with the degradation of the microsphere skeleton, most of drugs are released in the 4th to 6th weeks [Chen Qinghua, Chen Gang, et al, pharmacokinetic characteristics and clinical application of risperidone long-acting injection, Chinese Pharmacy, 2006, 15 (15):1235-1238]. Therefore, while the drug is administrated to patients by injection in the first 3 weeks, patients also need to rely on oral risperidone tablets to achieve therapeutic effects, and subsequently the clinical use is not convenient and patient compliance is poor.
Chen Guoguang et al reported a risperidone microsphere composition prepared by using PLGA (50:50, molecular weight of 30,000) with a drug-loading rate of 18%, by which a stable drug blood concentration may be maintained in vivo for 5-20 days [Chen Guoguang, Tang Jun, et al, study on risperidone biodegradable microspheres, Journal of China Pharmaceutical University, 2006, 37 (6):512-515]. However, the drug-loading rate of this microsphere composition is low, and is also accompanied with a burst release when the drug-loading rate is low.
CN101653422, the entire content of which is incorporated herein by reference, disclosed a risperidone microsphere composition which may cause sustained release for more than 4 weeks, and the drug release lag phase was eliminated by improving the drug-loading rate (above 45%), substantially solve burst release problems. However, the patent application of CN101653422 only verifies that the laboratory level (5 L scale) may achieve the desired object. It has been found by the applicant of the present invention that drug crystals were precipitated out during the scaled-up production of risperidone microspheres provided in CN101653422, the preparation stability was poor, and in vivo release behavior of the microspheres will change substantially after long-term storage.
As is well known, large-scale industrialized production has always been the bottleneck of the industrialization of the microsphere preparation, and therefore there is an urgent need to provide a formulation of risperidone microspheres that is stable in quality and suitable for large-scale industrialized production.